Thursday, November 11, 2010

PAT AND THE PARKING LOT: A Dickensian tale of local bureaucracy

One woman buys a house in need of love in a
neighborhood in need of care. Then she meets City Hall, the School District, infrastructure
problems, and a parking lot only a bureaucrat could love.

COLUMBIA, 11/10/10 (Beat Byte) -- It's
hard to find a person with a more genuine affection for home and hometown than
the subject of this story, Patricia Fowler.

A Boston-educated lawyer and Boone County Planning and
Zoning commissioner, Ms. Fowler's love for the cause of
a better Columbia -- which comes across as selfless and even endearing --
has helped her walk a fine line few local activists ever successfully navigate.

Vocal about the need to do the right thing, she adamantly
speaks truth to power. And yet, where speaking up to power in our provincial
little burg often merits dismissal and derogation, Ms.
Fowler (left, CAT TV photo) remains well-regarded, extremely so in most quarters. If it's any indication, among those to whom I speak in the First
Ward, she's a top pick to replace Columbia City Councilman Paul Sturtz when he
steps aside next year. A "dream ticket pick," in fact.

But Ms. Fowler is unlikely to run for such a job. Her
voice has been an effective moral catalyst beyond the bureaucracy, nowhere more
in evidence than in her months-long
struggleto get a parking lot to conform with the ways -- and laws
-- of her progressive hometown.

Park those dreams

Appearing as out of a bad dream next door to a darling
90-year-old house Fowler has been restoring with loving gusto, the parking lot
-- for Jefferson Junior High School -- couldn't have come with more
nightmare-inspiring baggage.

It sits on the edge of a carefully-marked flood plain that
turns routine storms into Arkian adventures, and by its tilted design, could --
without perceptive planning and obsessive oversight -- channel thousands of
gallons of stormwater into Ms. Fowler's and her neighbors' homes.

(Parking lots aren't known for their permeability, even
when permeability is part of their design).

In the same flood plain, major portions of the stormwater
drainage system were declared D.O.A. by the very engineering firm --
Columbia-based Engineering Surveys and Services (ESS) -- charged with designing
the parking lot for Columbia Public Schools (CPS). "We
encourage the City of Columbia to review this situation, and consider this as a
maintenance issue in dire need of repair," ESS wrote about the
dead stormwater system in a 2007 report to City Hall.

But that was three years ago and counting.

Wings of a waiver

The Jeff Jr. parking lot flew into Ms. Fowler's life on
the wings of a waiver -- a dangerous-sounding bureaucratic thing with few
details about its impact on neighbors, most recently a new arts education center
for elementary school children just across the street. The waiver, from City
Hall, seemed to let the School District skate on a number of important parking
lot requirements, like drainage regulations, water quality, and other hard-won
environmental caveats.

"Aside from the water quality issues covered by the
waiver, I'm concerned about how the parking lot meets the neighborhood and my
property," Fowler wrote to public works planner Phillip Teeple,
part of a City Hall team charged with regulatory oversight. "Will there be a
vegetative border? What aspects can we suggest to minimize
crime, i.e. crime prevention through environmental design?
How can we adjust the landscaping to absorb additional rain
water through vegetative plantings (which should also help the water
quality issues as a handy filter)?"

All this after Fowler, neighbors, and neighborhood
association officials attended a joint meeting with city and school district
honchos that should have answered these questions. In attendance: CPS school
superintendent Chris Belcher; assistant school superintendent
Wanda Brown; school board president Jan Mees
and board member Ines Segert; this writer; ESS engineer
Dave Bennett, who gave a presentation; Teeple and fellow public
works employees, who chimed in -- often with a kind of patronizing glee,
especially when Fowler -- a woman in a man's world of parking lots and such --
dared speak with a measure of authority.

They all came to communicate about the parking lot at the
Jefferson Junior Media Center. But what did they really say?

Though engineer Bennett sometimes blustered impatiently --
particularly when Ms. Fowler would raise her hand -- most attendees seemed to listen. Everyone, it seemed, got to speak.
It seemed a grand idea that the Columbia school district would build a model
parking lot -- a model of stormwater mitigation; a model of environmental
design; a model of community care; a model for students, teachers, parents, and
neighbors.

A model, because modeling is what schools are supposed to
do.

But Ms. Fowler came away with more questions than answers,
particularly about that iffy-sounding waiver.

"The granting of the waiver was an event I was not
expecting," she wrote Teeple after the meeting. "While this may be pro
forma to city engineering professionals, it concerns me and the neighbors within
my neighborhood association who attended the August 30th meeting. We
didn't see that one coming."

Indeed. And so, the bureaucrats would go back to their
desks to cite and memorandize and shoot Ms. Fowler's arguments full of new bullet points. And the wearing down would begin....

Next time: "It's hard work to be a good citizen; even
harder work to be a good Columbia citizen."